Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani – Creative Director, Bulgari Watches – and Maximilian Büsser – Founder of MB&F – sat down with us for a chat after the launch of MB&F X Bvlgari LM Flying T Allegra during Dubai Watch Week, to talk about the partnership and their astonishing creation
How did the whole collaboration come about? Did MB&F approach Bvlgari or vice versa?
Maximilian: It all started when one dude went up to introduce himself to another dude four years ago at Dubai Watch Week.
Fabrizio: This is the bond; it is not the story of two brands; it is two creative, crazy people. Max came up to me and said, “Ciao, I am Max and I would love for us to do a watch together. So, it is not Bvlgari and MB&F that came together to work. It was Max and Fabrizio working together. Of course, once we started, both of our teams came together to work.
When you approached Fabrizio, did you have an idea of how the watch should be?
Maximilian: Four years ago, I was an enormous Bvlgari fan – and I am not saying this because we are partnering now; I had seen his work on the Octo Finissimo and I just wanted to meet him and maybe try working on something together. This is something I have learnt; when you meet really competent people, really inspiring people, do stuff together if you can.
That is how it started: we started sketching on the terrace and we stayed there. That was four years ago; two years later, Antoine Pin takes over as Managing Director of Bvlgari’s watch division and we met and decided to have a breakfast during Dubai Watch Week. That is why we launched this at Dubai Watch Week – we initially met during Dubai Watch Week, had a breakfast during Dubai Watch Week where Antoine sees us behaving like kids – enthusiastically sketching on papers – and tells us to go for it. I ask him if he can speak to Bvlgari CEO, Jean-Christophe Babin, who also agreed. The whole project was then made live during the lockdown. We were Zooming back and forth though both of us were in Switzerland.
How many variations of the watch did you create before finalising the design of the watch?
Fabrizio: There were no changes; this is the sketch I first showed Max and you can see it is the same design.
Maximilian: There were minor changes of course, but no major ones.
Fabrizio: After this, we did a computer rendering.
Maximilian: And then I took a year or so doing this. The only thing that is actually the same as in the original FlyingT is the movement. Absolutely everything else is different, which is not very apparent in the photographs. There was a decision at some point on the size of the diamonds.
Fabrizio: Yes, because our idea of stones was even bigger; we finally went with bigger stones.
Usually in a collaboration, there are a lot of hurdles but that doesn’t seem to be the case here?
Fabrizio: Yes, because it was not a competition. It was more like “I have an idea; what do you think?” with an “Yes, it is okay for me.” And we were done. It was not like “I have a better idea than yours” or “I want to put more of my brand here” kind of a thing. We never discussed placement of logos, or it looks more MB&F or more Bvlgari, nor did we discuss packaging or anything like that. We just made sketches, discussed them, sent messages; we discussed a bit about the lugs because we had removed the lugs and it was a technical issue.
Maximilian: It was incredible and everybody was shocked, because they hadn’t seen this – Bvlgari and MB&F – coming. For us, it was a no-brainer. I just realised that 20 years ago, I was a jeweller at Harry Winston who went to see a watchmaker and it became Opus 1. It seems crazy that 20 years later I am the watchmaker. Growing up, I have realised that it is important you know your shortcomings. Lot of people know their strengths, but they are usually in denial of their shortcomings. Over the years, I think I have realised the things I am really useless at, and I try not to do them – on the personal and professional levels.
Why only 20 pieces of each edition?
Maximilian: Because I craft only around some 200+ watches a year. All of the MB&F X Bulgari LM Flying T Allegra are completely sold out before the launch. We kept aside two watches for the launch. For us, it is 20% of our yearly production and we can’t do more than that. So, could we do different variations next year? Yes, of course, but we won’t do that. That is what commercial people do; we are creators and that makes it even more important. In time, for one time only, Bvlgari and MB&F for one piece.
Will Bvlgari and MB&F partner for a different watch sometime in the future?
Fabrizio: We never planned this kind of thing really. We have a lot of ideas but we don’t know what will happen in the future. We do not have a deal to create 2, 3 or 4 limited editions in the next ten years. We will see, we are very happy with the results of this collaboration – everyone’s stunned amazement. We are not obliged to create another watch together, but we will see. Why not indeed?
Maximilian: I think we would like to; we have discussed so many other things that we would like to see come to life, but part of the importance of the collaboration is the amazement. If we do a collaboration every year, after the third year, people are going to be blasé about it. So, we have to not do it; it is sometimes frustrating.
Fabrizio: Yes, we have to find the right challenge, the right motivation and the right input. Let us see.
How did the clients feel about the full-on jewellery on an MB&F watch?
Maximilian: Five of the 20 pieces were sold to people who hadn’t even seen the watch; when they heard we are teaming up with Bvlgari, they put their money on the table. One of our retailers in Taipei told us that he had a deposit. When we asked how without seeing the watch, he said that he explained that it is a FlyingT done with Bvlgari and the client immediately paid up. We then started Zoom calls to people who we thought would be interested, and honestly every person we showed it to, we sold. We stopped at 18; we had shown it only at our boutiques in Singapore and Shanghai and all 18 were sold there; we had no chance to show at the other 215 Bvlgari boutiques.
Fabrizio: That is the point; we had planned to show at 150 boutiques and finally sold all of them in just one boutique.
